One Life, In Blue
by Dragon Empress
Summary: Breaking up is hard to do, but some people like to think they can do better than others, and Susan Storm isn't going to let something like a broken heart stop her from going out and doing great things with her life... 'A PreMovie ficlet'


**Okay, now, this is my first attempt at Fantastic Four fanfiction, as well as my first real foray back into any fanfiction at all after months and months of suffering from a writer's block that was twice the size of Mt. Everest, and three times as difficult to climb over. Am I rusty? Well, we'll see...**

**DISCLAIMARRR: I DON'T OWN IT, BUT I DO OWN A SMALL TOY PIRATE SHIP THAT GOES IN MY BATH. NOT THE SAME THING? I DIDN'T THINK SO EITHER...**

**Oh, and just to let you know, this story is set before the first movie, right after Reed and Sue's nasty break-up. ****Now, on with the show!**

**- - -**

Susan Storm is doing fine. She goes out some nights, stays in some others, and prides herself on keeping busy and keeping afloat in a time in her life when it would be so easy to just sink to the bottom and never come back up again. Because it happens, you know, she's seen it before and she'll see it again. She'll be damned if it happens to her.

So basically, life goes on, and it's really not so bad if you force it into submission. There are a million ways to be distracted in a city as big and bright as this one, and it's not at all hard to avoid all the people you're avoiding if you just know where _not_ to go and what _not _to do. It's not like there aren't plenty of better things she could be doing with her time anyway, and if those money-off coupons in her purse for that new exhibit at the Museum of Natural History go out of date, well isn't that just too damn bad? They came free with the newspaper anyway.

Fact of the matter is, she'll just throw them out the next time she remembers that they're there. Along with the large, navy blue t-shirt she found under the bed last week, and the coffee mug in her kitchen that reads _'I'll sleep when I'm dead!' _in white, bold lettering over a shiny, azure glaze. He owned far too many blue things, at the end of the day, and keeping them around is just cluttering up her apartment in a way she doesn't need or want.

And she purposely never stops to think about how they were never considered clutter before, and she spends her daytimes going to lunch with her friends (in-between job interviews) and acting like she doesn't ever have moments of weakness that end in her wearing that old, blue shirt to bed and crying herself to sleep on one of the sleeves. That would be akin to admitting defeat, after all, and Sue will not admit defeat anymore than she will admit to missing Reed. Because everything was alright before he came into her life with his science and his smile (that she totally, _definitely_ doesn't miss anymore, by the way), and she knows that if she keeps on with her moving on, everything is going to be alright again. Everything is going to be fine.

Because Reed Richards was just a man with too many hang-ups and issues and blue things, and Susan Storm is a woman with a purpose and a mission and a will to go out there and make a difference in the world. More than just the difference between him and her too; she wants him to get the _New Scientist_ through his door one day and see her on the cover, doing fine and looking good and so not missing him at all.

Of course, that doesn't mean he isn't allowed to miss _her_, and maybe if he calls and apologises some day soon, she'll let him come over to pick up that stupid mug of his. And maybe she'll even consider giving him those money-off vouchers too, because it's good to be the bigger person, and she's so done with museums for now anyway. After all, who does she have left to go with? The idea of her brother willingly visiting a museum is ridiculous, and she doesn't want to admit to anybody but herself that all her female friends in this city are really only good for going out and getting wasted with. These days, it often seems like there's just nobody left to challenge her anymore, and it's not just because they're all too busy feeling sorry for her. There's a hole in her brain as well as in her heart, and neither of them feel like they're getting any smaller.

But that's okay; Sue appreciates that you just have to power on through with these things and never give up, and never let anybody see you cry. Because once you admit out loud that he broke your heart it becomes a permanent thing that's down on record and anybody can mention to you just as you're starting to forget it ever happened. So maybe it's just easier to act like it never happened at all. Not healthier, no, but easier, and most of the time she so badly wants for everything to just be easy again. She doesn't want his complications any more than she wants his clutter. It really is time for life to go on.

And so it does. One week later, there are shredded scraps of newspaper and glints of bright blue broken porcelain lying in a black trash bag out on the street, waiting for the garbage man to take them away. They fit snugly between the orange peel and the well-thumbed pages of last week's _New Scientist_ in forming a picture of everything that she is done with now; of all the things that have now outlived their usefulness, and have go in order to make way for all the things that will one day take their place.

Because recently it's seemed like the phone has never stopped ringing, but it's never the one person she really wants to hear from that's listening on the other end of the line. Sue understands now that there will be no apologies, and begins to wonder why she ever bothered to wait for him at all.

She's certainly done waiting now.

Because Susan Storm is doing fine (thank you very much for asking), and everything in her life is absolutely _fantastic_. She goes out some nights, stays in some others, and never, _ever_ feels tempted to just throw on that old, blue t-shirt and spend the entire day crying over cable television and overlarge tubs of mint ice-cream. No sir, _no way_. The fact that it's still lying on her bedroom floor (washed twice now, and still smelling like that aftershave she bought him for his last birthday) just means that she hasn't quite gotten round to throwing it out yet, and that's perfectly understandable when you think about how busy she's been lately; it doesn't necessarily have to mean that she's still struggling, and that sometimes, the nights still hurt so bad she just needs to something familiar to hold on to as she falls asleep. It doesn't have to mean anything at all.

But still, it goes into the closet whenever she has a visitor, and every time it re-emerges Susan wonders if fooling herself is ever going to be as easy as fooling her friends and family.

And every night when she goes to bed, she still wears blue and nothing else.

- - -

**Well, there you have it. A first attempt. Was it any good? Or maybe it was so terrible you wish you'd never become literate, just to make reading it absolutely impossible? Either way, a review to let me know would be just lovely, cheers!**


End file.
